Choya says team will continue, criticizes WCS system (TIG)…

On October 02 2013 19:46 Fionn wrote:The worst thing, to me, about the current WCS system -- outside the whole players being able to touch down in their "region" for four days every three months and then fly back to their actual home region -- is the grand slam seasonal finals. If you're going to do regions and build those storylines, then how backwards is it that those two plus months of games are completely wiped out a weak later at the grand slam finals?

Maru, a prodigy, and a huge underdog against Rain in the WCS finals, went on to beat the favored reigning champion in a memorable series. You had the iconic moment with his mom hugging him, Maru celebrating with his sister and a decent sized crowd cheering him. This was all negated when Maru had to travel to Europe the weekend after, lost -- if I remember correctly -- in the group stages, and Bomber went on to win the championship. Polt, duckdeok and Maru all had interesting tales to their championships, but none of it mattered because Bomber and Jaedong ended up in the finals and were featured on a larger scale with more money going there way.

1. Make the players have to actually reside in their home region. While it's funny to talk about Mvp being a European native, it's less humorous when he plays with awful lag in the Ro32, and then if he makes it farther, comes down for a few days and then leaves right away when the games are over. I thought the whole point of not region locking was so that Koreans could go to other regions, play on those servers, and up the competition around them by living in European/North American team houses. Currently, that is exactly the opposite of what is going on.

2. Kill the seasonal grand slams. They're awful for narrative purposes. Fucking awful. By themselves, disregarding the entire WCS story from Season 1 opening to Blizzcon Finals, the grand slams were produced awesomely -- with great crowds, good casting and hosting, and Blizzard got higher viewership than the respective regions were able to deliver with their finals. But if you actually want to tell a story and build heroes, villains, and interesting characters, YOU CANNOT continue the grand slam finals. It's incredibly damaging to crown three champions from three regions and two weeks later have all three perform poorly against people who didn't even make their respective region's finals.

Even when you had Sniper, the craziest, least likely champion of all-time in a rushed GSL season, you still had time to build him up. Was he a gigantic fluke? Is he actually good? What's going to happen next season? Will someone rise up to challenge him? If the current WCS system was implemented during the time Sniper won his GSL, then he most likely would have flown to Europe or America a week later, got his ass kicked in the group stages, and everyone shrugging their shoulders going "Well, that last season of GSL was a complete waste of time."

The prestige of a GSL and OSL title right now is like a soda that has been left out overnight. It's flat. It might taste good going down, but the aftertaste is nasty. I want Starcraft to succeed. It's the game that got me into writing and loving e-sports, so while I think it's not in a healthy position currently, it can get better with a few changes going into 2014.

Just my long ranting thoughts.

I disagree about the Season Finals. Even if you just consider the champions, what is the difference between going out in the group stages of the Season Finals vs. the group stages the following season? They've already built their storylines with their run to the finals. The Season Finals are an opportunity perhaps for those storylines to continue but also for new stories to emerge. Consider this last season. What of Naniwa's and Scarlett's run to the Ro8, defying the odds against the Korean masses? Or Jaedongs emerging dominance of the ZvP matchup only to lose once again in the finals? And then what of Bomber himself, finally winning a tournament after 2 years of the infamous Bomber's Law? Do their narratives mean less just because they didn't win their region?

I definitely do agree about the lost prestige of the GSL though. Code S has always been the pinnacle of SCII for me, but WCS Korea just isn't quite the same and has reduced the meaning of becoming a GSL champion. I'm not sure what solution could fix that though.

Although who knows. Perhaps WCS will continue to improve and establish its own legacy, and 5 years down the line, we'll look down the hallowed line of those who managed to become WCS Champions.

Because of WCS, all the foundations have crumbled. If things go like this again next year, then StarCraft 2 teams will be hurt even more."

He is clearly confusing causation with correlation. WCS didn't ruin Sc2. I think it likely wouldn't have been even worse without WCS, but eventually if there are not enough viewers watching Sc2, then the size of this scene couldn't be sustained. Thus, it has to be scaled down.

But for there to be more tournaments, they have to be proven profitable. Blizzard came in and shat all over Gom's pay wall business model and ruined their viewership. Look at the view numbers from 2011/2012 and the view numbers from 2013. The contrast is appalling. More people watched brood lord infestor GSL than what we're seeing right now, even with all the crying and moaning about how boring the game was. SC2 in Korea was unsustainable with the introduction of KeSPA, but Blizzard took a contracting scene and made it implode.

On October 03 2013 07:25 jinorazi wrote:to me it seems blizzard wanted the best players from their regional leagues to duke it out at the end of the year. however they've also replaced those regional leagues with their own. in the end, blizzard wanted a "world finals" and being it called mlg/iem/osl/gsl/wcs/dh makes no difference since any of these leagues allowed koreans to play in it.

so i guess other than removing world finals, it makes no difference, suggesting region lock will be obsolete, unless you just dont want koreans playing in your local league...but that'll be stupid, no more stupid than kicking out messi from la liga because spanish league's best player should be spanish, not argentinian.

Messi is physically on site and thus contributing to barcelona and Spains future success in soccer. You have to be a localresident to be a part of the lineup of the club in soccer. This is exactly what those who complain on the current WCS want implemented in that system as well.

Also most major leagues in soccer has rules for how many foreigners (outside of the region) can play for a team at any given time (spanish league has no such rule to my knowledge for some reason). And all players must be approved for VISA and be accepted by the local soccer federation before they can join the team. All the other sports have a federation who governs the rules about this to maintain fairness. You just don't see them as much since there arn't any headlines about this in media.

There's a lot of people comparing to other sports without realizing how things actually work within said sport. ..

there is a confusion, i was considering everything as a LAN event. i keep failing to realize non korean wcs is an offline event. (so i assume players are there to play)

i also understand the limitation is there to allow the local talent to shine (imo). for example KBL (korean basketball) did not allow foreigners, then changed it to 2, then tried to impose a foreigner height limit which was denied.

the scenes/leagues/regions where they already are the standard have no need for such limitation.

i'm all for region locking if 1) world finals is removed or 2) more world finals seed available to WCS KR. (EUFA gets more world cup seeds than AFC for same principle; player base/size and skill)

region locking and world finals conflict each other.

Nope of it were a LAN event then nobody would have a problem. Still confused why Korea needs more representation for a world final? Just because you have a stronger pool of players to pick from doesn't mean you just get to invite more. If anything proving you are the best of the best within a group of strong players should be more meaningful in itself. It's like when a foreigner won everything outside of GSL and then giving that league a go. The way things are setup now it's Blizzard wanting to maximize viewership and looking at the short term benefits rather than promoting sc2 on a regional scale so they all grow over time. I guess blizzard isn't thinking about what they could have when they get around to making starcraft 3?

Because money. The fact that beating Americans and Europeans can get you the same number of points (which is correlated with money) as beating a tournament with people like Innovation, Parting, Soulkey, etc., is ridiculous. This is most likely why Blizzard didn't region lock and why WCS NA is all Koreans now. Without the Koreans to push the development of the metagame forward, the game becomes boring -- we already have the perspective of what could have been. Had we never seen Koreans play the game before, it would be a different story, but now that we know what you can do once you're a mechanical machine...it hurts to watch 2nd tier players win more points than the top 64 players in Korea by playing in an easier region. I love finale (a.k.a. duckdeok), but do you think he would have ever reached the Ro8 in Korea? And the people he beat to get there wouldn't have even made it to Code A aside from MC.

This was all a very long-winded way of saying that Koreans got screwed by the WCS format and the only way to actually keep that running is to give them incentives to play the freaking game. More seeds to BlizzCon means more money. But what should have happened is Blizzard should have run WCS separately from OSL/GSL and let those two tournaments do whatever they want. Who cares if you're overshadowed, look at how good the WCG games are and nobody gives a shit about that. It's money, so all the Koreans play. If you're worried about image Blizzard, just make it a better tournament. None of this competition-killing, monopolistic shit.

I'm still confused how koreans got screwed when they play in every region? Is it because they get lag when they play online games in europe from korea? Is that the next thing to cry about because everything is so unfair for korean players? Is it because they have to fly out to play a few required games?

I liked it better before WCS wrecked everything. It was less whining from koreans that think the world should revolve around them and their skill. There were more large tournaments going on. Everyone seemed happier in general toward sc2.

On October 02 2013 19:46 Fionn wrote:The worst thing, to me, about the current WCS system -- outside the whole players being able to touch down in their "region" for four days every three months and then fly back to their actual home region -- is the grand slam seasonal finals. If you're going to do regions and build those storylines, then how backwards is it that those two plus months of games are completely wiped out a weak later at the grand slam finals?

Maru, a prodigy, and a huge underdog against Rain in the WCS finals, went on to beat the favored reigning champion in a memorable series. You had the iconic moment with his mom hugging him, Maru celebrating with his sister and a decent sized crowd cheering him. This was all negated when Maru had to travel to Europe the weekend after, lost -- if I remember correctly -- in the group stages, and Bomber went on to win the championship. Polt, duckdeok and Maru all had interesting tales to their championships, but none of it mattered because Bomber and Jaedong ended up in the finals and were featured on a larger scale with more money going there way.

1. Make the players have to actually reside in their home region. While it's funny to talk about Mvp being a European native, it's less humorous when he plays with awful lag in the Ro32, and then if he makes it farther, comes down for a few days and then leaves right away when the games are over. I thought the whole point of not region locking was so that Koreans could go to other regions, play on those servers, and up the competition around them by living in European/North American team houses. Currently, that is exactly the opposite of what is going on.

2. Kill the seasonal grand slams. They're awful for narrative purposes. Fucking awful. By themselves, disregarding the entire WCS story from Season 1 opening to Blizzcon Finals, the grand slams were produced awesomely -- with great crowds, good casting and hosting, and Blizzard got higher viewership than the respective regions were able to deliver with their finals. But if you actually want to tell a story and build heroes, villains, and interesting characters, YOU CANNOT continue the grand slam finals. It's incredibly damaging to crown three champions from three regions and two weeks later have all three perform poorly against people who didn't even make their respective region's finals.

Even when you had Sniper, the craziest, least likely champion of all-time in a rushed GSL season, you still had time to build him up. Was he a gigantic fluke? Is he actually good? What's going to happen next season? Will someone rise up to challenge him? If the current WCS system was implemented during the time Sniper won his GSL, then he most likely would have flown to Europe or America a week later, got his ass kicked in the group stages, and everyone shrugging their shoulders going "Well, that last season of GSL was a complete waste of time."

The prestige of a GSL and OSL title right now is like a soda that has been left out overnight. It's flat. It might taste good going down, but the aftertaste is nasty. I want Starcraft to succeed. It's the game that got me into writing and loving e-sports, so while I think it's not in a healthy position currently, it can get better with a few changes going into 2014.

Just my long ranting thoughts.

I think grand finals are a good idea. There is a simple way to keep the storylines alive - restrict the championship to the regional champions only. Why not have a single day event where the American champ plays the European champ in a Bo7, then a short break before the winner of that match plays Korean Champ? It could go from city to city around the world. Only bringing three players would dramatically lower travel expenses for Blizzard.

On October 02 2013 19:46 Fionn wrote:The worst thing, to me, about the current WCS system -- outside the whole players being able to touch down in their "region" for four days every three months and then fly back to their actual home region -- is the grand slam seasonal finals. If you're going to do regions and build those storylines, then how backwards is it that those two plus months of games are completely wiped out a weak later at the grand slam finals?

Maru, a prodigy, and a huge underdog against Rain in the WCS finals, went on to beat the favored reigning champion in a memorable series. You had the iconic moment with his mom hugging him, Maru celebrating with his sister and a decent sized crowd cheering him. This was all negated when Maru had to travel to Europe the weekend after, lost -- if I remember correctly -- in the group stages, and Bomber went on to win the championship. Polt, duckdeok and Maru all had interesting tales to their championships, but none of it mattered because Bomber and Jaedong ended up in the finals and were featured on a larger scale with more money going there way.

1. Make the players have to actually reside in their home region. While it's funny to talk about Mvp being a European native, it's less humorous when he plays with awful lag in the Ro32, and then if he makes it farther, comes down for a few days and then leaves right away when the games are over. I thought the whole point of not region locking was so that Koreans could go to other regions, play on those servers, and up the competition around them by living in European/North American team houses. Currently, that is exactly the opposite of what is going on.

2. Kill the seasonal grand slams. They're awful for narrative purposes. Fucking awful. By themselves, disregarding the entire WCS story from Season 1 opening to Blizzcon Finals, the grand slams were produced awesomely -- with great crowds, good casting and hosting, and Blizzard got higher viewership than the respective regions were able to deliver with their finals. But if you actually want to tell a story and build heroes, villains, and interesting characters, YOU CANNOT continue the grand slam finals. It's incredibly damaging to crown three champions from three regions and two weeks later have all three perform poorly against people who didn't even make their respective region's finals.

Even when you had Sniper, the craziest, least likely champion of all-time in a rushed GSL season, you still had time to build him up. Was he a gigantic fluke? Is he actually good? What's going to happen next season? Will someone rise up to challenge him? If the current WCS system was implemented during the time Sniper won his GSL, then he most likely would have flown to Europe or America a week later, got his ass kicked in the group stages, and everyone shrugging their shoulders going "Well, that last season of GSL was a complete waste of time."

The prestige of a GSL and OSL title right now is like a soda that has been left out overnight. It's flat. It might taste good going down, but the aftertaste is nasty. I want Starcraft to succeed. It's the game that got me into writing and loving e-sports, so while I think it's not in a healthy position currently, it can get better with a few changes going into 2014.

Just my long ranting thoughts.

I think grand finals are a good idea. There is a simple way to keep the storylines alive - restrict the championship to the regional champions only. Why not have a single day event where the American champ plays the European champ in a Bo7, then a short break before the winner of that match plays Korean Champ? It could go from city to city around the world. Only bringing three players would dramatically lower travel expenses for Blizzard.

Can anyone explain to me why the WCS - system isnt that good for korea?

Is it because of the prize money? Is it too low ? Or dos the WCS-Premier league destroy the chance for any other Tournament to develop? Do the Korean sponsors want more freedom in buildung up own tournaments ?

On October 02 2013 19:46 Fionn wrote:The worst thing, to me, about the current WCS system -- outside the whole players being able to touch down in their "region" for four days every three months and then fly back to their actual home region -- is the grand slam seasonal finals. If you're going to do regions and build those storylines, then how backwards is it that those two plus months of games are completely wiped out a weak later at the grand slam finals?

Maru, a prodigy, and a huge underdog against Rain in the WCS finals, went on to beat the favored reigning champion in a memorable series. You had the iconic moment with his mom hugging him, Maru celebrating with his sister and a decent sized crowd cheering him. This was all negated when Maru had to travel to Europe the weekend after, lost -- if I remember correctly -- in the group stages, and Bomber went on to win the championship. Polt, duckdeok and Maru all had interesting tales to their championships, but none of it mattered because Bomber and Jaedong ended up in the finals and were featured on a larger scale with more money going there way.

1. Make the players have to actually reside in their home region. While it's funny to talk about Mvp being a European native, it's less humorous when he plays with awful lag in the Ro32, and then if he makes it farther, comes down for a few days and then leaves right away when the games are over. I thought the whole point of not region locking was so that Koreans could go to other regions, play on those servers, and up the competition around them by living in European/North American team houses. Currently, that is exactly the opposite of what is going on.

2. Kill the seasonal grand slams. They're awful for narrative purposes. Fucking awful. By themselves, disregarding the entire WCS story from Season 1 opening to Blizzcon Finals, the grand slams were produced awesomely -- with great crowds, good casting and hosting, and Blizzard got higher viewership than the respective regions were able to deliver with their finals. But if you actually want to tell a story and build heroes, villains, and interesting characters, YOU CANNOT continue the grand slam finals. It's incredibly damaging to crown three champions from three regions and two weeks later have all three perform poorly against people who didn't even make their respective region's finals.

Even when you had Sniper, the craziest, least likely champion of all-time in a rushed GSL season, you still had time to build him up. Was he a gigantic fluke? Is he actually good? What's going to happen next season? Will someone rise up to challenge him? If the current WCS system was implemented during the time Sniper won his GSL, then he most likely would have flown to Europe or America a week later, got his ass kicked in the group stages, and everyone shrugging their shoulders going "Well, that last season of GSL was a complete waste of time."

The prestige of a GSL and OSL title right now is like a soda that has been left out overnight. It's flat. It might taste good going down, but the aftertaste is nasty. I want Starcraft to succeed. It's the game that got me into writing and loving e-sports, so while I think it's not in a healthy position currently, it can get better with a few changes going into 2014.

Just my long ranting thoughts.

I think grand finals are a good idea. There is a simple way to keep the storylines alive - restrict the championship to the regional champions only. Why not have a single day event where the American champ plays the European champ in a Bo7, then a short break before the winner of that match plays Korean Champ? It could go from city to city around the world. Only bringing three players would dramatically lower travel expenses for Blizzard.

The WCS KR champ is already basically the world champ, why play some other koreans who fled to easier regions after already taking out the GSL? The hype for your grand final would be even lower than the current setup.

On October 03 2013 19:56 Crackpot wrote:Can anyone explain to me why the WCS - system isnt that good for korea?

Is it because of the prize money? Is it too low ? Or dos the WCS-Premier league destroy the chance for any other Tournament to develop? Do the Korean sponsors want more freedom in buildung up own tournaments ?

Before there were more GSLS(5+blizzard cup) + 1/2 OSLS per year the prize money for GSL was much better then wcs kr's is.it effectively removed money from the korean scene.

On October 03 2013 02:27 Pirfiktshon wrote:The chances will be considerably higher if we actually allow them to compete in a tournament of 16 people and 4 from NA 4 From EU 4 From SEA and 4 From Kor.... They will have 0 chance if there is 0 of them right?

Edit: Ofcourse I'm referring to Blizzcon

You are treating this as completely random thing. Nowadays the only reliable way to get foreigner vs korean final or foreigner vs foreigner final is to SERIOUSLY limit amount of koreans participating compared to amount of players who are capable of winning at least Bo3 against them. How many players from SEA for example(they are great guys, but i doubt they will deny it) you know that can take Bo3 off HerO on a rather regular basis?

Why does this always come up when this topic comes along. And always with the wrong conclusion. Since you are from Russia I'll assume you know what skiing is and have some grasp of that sport and use an example from the sport to explain this and what can be done to counteract it (it's also a very good sport to use since their situation is simular to korea and esports).

First some facts. Skiing has a international federation called FIS who sets all the rules for international competition. This organization exists solely to promote the sport. It does not seek to maximize gain short term but to promote the sport as a whole long term (this part is important especially for esport). The organization is run by previous active athlets and not corporations. Here's a link to their rules for international competition.

This is a growing sport that's been around for a long time and done the mistakes. It's also a sport with a very simular problem to esports. Norways is completely dominant as a nation. If there was no region locking and no limit of participation from different countries the top 10 of a world chamionship 2014 might look like this (I know there won't be a world championship next year).

The international organization knows this and has put rules in place to limit Norway and other strong nations participation to make the competition more enjoyable to watch from people all over the world (as opposed to the result above who only norwegians would like). Because the goal of the organization is to grow the sport, not to promote Norway or norwegian athletes. So, every nation can only send 4 participants +1 slot for the reigning champion (follows the athlete not the country). So Norway usually has 5 participants, everyone else 4 or less. This gives Norway a little edge but nothing that will upset the competition too much. As a fan from Norway you can still look forward to a good championship where norwegians have a good chanse of winning. And a fan from every other country you can look forward to a championship where someone from your country _CAN_ win. Even Norway promotes these rules (and helped create them) because they realize that it's much more fun to be the champion in something people elsewhere care about as opposed to being the world champion in american football to take 1 example.

Despite this Norway has been dominating pretty badly again lately and the norwegians worry that this might diminish the interest in the sport globally and damage the sport. To try and counteract this they send some of their trainers to other countries to help them build up the competition.We'll see if it's enough or more action need to be taken to level the field.

This is how a professional sport works with these issues. Why is it so hard for esports to learn from them?? That is what i don't understand. Nothing we do creating these events is new except the media. When it comes to generating interest and "hype" there's over 100 years of history from other sports to learns from.

Here's a actual result from the last WC (2013) to give you and idea what these rules have ment for skiing.

Whoa, that's an awful analogy.Full disclosure: football is the only sport I follow these days.While the NFL tries to actively promote the sport overseas, I can assure the vast majority of the American public does not care whether or not it's watched internationally.

Taken a step further, if the game itself is intrinsically interesting, I don't think it matters where the competition comes from. That's how I feel about SC as well.

On October 03 2013 02:27 Pirfiktshon wrote:The chances will be considerably higher if we actually allow them to compete in a tournament of 16 people and 4 from NA 4 From EU 4 From SEA and 4 From Kor.... They will have 0 chance if there is 0 of them right?

Edit: Ofcourse I'm referring to Blizzcon

You are treating this as completely random thing. Nowadays the only reliable way to get foreigner vs korean final or foreigner vs foreigner final is to SERIOUSLY limit amount of koreans participating compared to amount of players who are capable of winning at least Bo3 against them. How many players from SEA for example(they are great guys, but i doubt they will deny it) you know that can take Bo3 off HerO on a rather regular basis?

Why does this always come up when this topic comes along. And always with the wrong conclusion. Since you are from Russia I'll assume you know what skiing is and have some grasp of that sport and use an example from the sport to explain this and what can be done to counteract it (it's also a very good sport to use since their situation is simular to korea and esports).

First some facts. Skiing has a international federation called FIS who sets all the rules for international competition. This organization exists solely to promote the sport. It does not seek to maximize gain short term but to promote the sport as a whole long term (this part is important especially for esport). The organization is run by previous active athlets and not corporations. Here's a link to their rules for international competition.

This is a growing sport that's been around for a long time and done the mistakes. It's also a sport with a very simular problem to esports. Norways is completely dominant as a nation. If there was no region locking and no limit of participation from different countries the top 10 of a world chamionship 2014 might look like this (I know there won't be a world championship next year).

The international organization knows this and has put rules in place to limit Norway and other strong nations participation to make the competition more enjoyable to watch from people all over the world (as opposed to the result above who only norwegians would like). Because the goal of the organization is to grow the sport, not to promote Norway or norwegian athletes. So, every nation can only send 4 participants +1 slot for the reigning champion (follows the athlete not the country). So Norway usually has 5 participants, everyone else 4 or less. This gives Norway a little edge but nothing that will upset the competition too much. As a fan from Norway you can still look forward to a good championship where norwegians have a good chanse of winning. And a fan from every other country you can look forward to a championship where someone from your country _CAN_ win. Even Norway promotes these rules (and helped create them) because they realize that it's much more fun to be the champion in something people elsewhere care about as opposed to being the world champion in american football to take 1 example.

Despite this Norway has been dominating pretty badly again lately and the norwegians worry that this might diminish the interest in the sport globally and damage the sport. To try and counteract this they send some of their trainers to other countries to help them build up the competition.We'll see if it's enough or more action need to be taken to level the field.

This is how a professional sport works with these issues. Why is it so hard for esports to learn from them?? That is what i don't understand. Nothing we do creating these events is new except the media. When it comes to generating interest and "hype" there's over 100 years of history from other sports to learns from.

Here's a actual result from the last WC (2013) to give you and idea what these rules have ment for skiing.

Whoa, that's an awful analogy.Full disclosure: football is the only sport I follow these days.While the NFL tries to actively promote the sport overseas, I can assure the vast majority of the American public does not care whether or not it's watched internationally.

Taken a step further, if the game itself is intrinsically interesting, I don't think it matters where the competition comes from. That's how I feel about SC as well.

Spoken like a true American.

I think neither analogy is on point because of the eSports medium, if skiing is an awful analogy, NFL is just as much.

On October 03 2013 02:27 Pirfiktshon wrote:The chances will be considerably higher if we actually allow them to compete in a tournament of 16 people and 4 from NA 4 From EU 4 From SEA and 4 From Kor.... They will have 0 chance if there is 0 of them right?

Edit: Ofcourse I'm referring to Blizzcon

You are treating this as completely random thing. Nowadays the only reliable way to get foreigner vs korean final or foreigner vs foreigner final is to SERIOUSLY limit amount of koreans participating compared to amount of players who are capable of winning at least Bo3 against them. How many players from SEA for example(they are great guys, but i doubt they will deny it) you know that can take Bo3 off HerO on a rather regular basis?

Why does this always come up when this topic comes along. And always with the wrong conclusion. Since you are from Russia I'll assume you know what skiing is and have some grasp of that sport and use an example from the sport to explain this and what can be done to counteract it (it's also a very good sport to use since their situation is simular to korea and esports).

First some facts. Skiing has a international federation called FIS who sets all the rules for international competition. This organization exists solely to promote the sport. It does not seek to maximize gain short term but to promote the sport as a whole long term (this part is important especially for esport). The organization is run by previous active athlets and not corporations. Here's a link to their rules for international competition.

This is a growing sport that's been around for a long time and done the mistakes. It's also a sport with a very simular problem to esports. Norways is completely dominant as a nation. If there was no region locking and no limit of participation from different countries the top 10 of a world chamionship 2014 might look like this (I know there won't be a world championship next year).

The international organization knows this and has put rules in place to limit Norway and other strong nations participation to make the competition more enjoyable to watch from people all over the world (as opposed to the result above who only norwegians would like). Because the goal of the organization is to grow the sport, not to promote Norway or norwegian athletes. So, every nation can only send 4 participants +1 slot for the reigning champion (follows the athlete not the country). So Norway usually has 5 participants, everyone else 4 or less. This gives Norway a little edge but nothing that will upset the competition too much. As a fan from Norway you can still look forward to a good championship where norwegians have a good chanse of winning. And a fan from every other country you can look forward to a championship where someone from your country _CAN_ win. Even Norway promotes these rules (and helped create them) because they realize that it's much more fun to be the champion in something people elsewhere care about as opposed to being the world champion in american football to take 1 example.

Despite this Norway has been dominating pretty badly again lately and the norwegians worry that this might diminish the interest in the sport globally and damage the sport. To try and counteract this they send some of their trainers to other countries to help them build up the competition.We'll see if it's enough or more action need to be taken to level the field.

This is how a professional sport works with these issues. Why is it so hard for esports to learn from them?? That is what i don't understand. Nothing we do creating these events is new except the media. When it comes to generating interest and "hype" there's over 100 years of history from other sports to learns from.

Here's a actual result from the last WC (2013) to give you and idea what these rules have ment for skiing.

Whoa, that's an awful analogy.Full disclosure: football is the only sport I follow these days.While the NFL tries to actively promote the sport overseas, I can assure the vast majority of the American public does not care whether or not it's watched internationally.

Taken a step further, if the game itself is intrinsically interesting, I don't think it matters where the competition comes from. That's how I feel about SC as well.

The analogy is also broken due to some incorectness. Dont really recall the rules for the World Champs but in the world cup each country get a number of starting spots that they have to earn by getting points (top 30 earns points) from as many different athletes. Norway and Sweden usually max out on that. You can also as a individual earn a spot for a part of the season by winning the regional cup such as the Skandinavian cup, usually won by a norweigian. In the worlds it max four per country and the reign champion on that distance. The times norway or any other country has five starters is when they world champion happends to come from norway.

Another important thing to note is that Norway is faaar from dominant especially in the mens class. They do have ALOT of good skiers below the national team compared to other countries but at the absolute top they are not that great. Fun thing, a couple of years ago I noted that Norway had over a hundread teams in the national championship relay, sweden had a little over 20.

Anyways XC skiings biggest problem is the huge retarded changes made during the last 15 years to pander to german casuals who'd rather watch fucking boring biathlon anyways. Jürg Capol is a fucking retard and has destroyed my favourite sport to a bigger difference than SC2 vs BW. It's more lite WC3 vs BW.

/rage

I have the best fucking lawyers in the country including the man they call the Malmis.